The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam re-opened last month to a royal fanfare and panoply of government ministers, artists, scholars, museum directors and proud, smart-suited Amsterdam citizens. The 1973 open-plan daylit building, designed by Gerrit Rietveld, was originally planned for some 60,000 visitors a year; but just before it closed for renovation, this trickle had become a flood of around a million a year. It is now likely to increase again. For the past 10 months it has been closed. ...

In a culminating acte de theatre at the well-organised, high-calibre, but poorly attended conference on 'The Modern City Revisited', Michael Sorkin rolled out a four post-er. Revisiting the 'modern city' was, he claimed, an ongoing process dominated by concepts and ideas that are post- universal, post-zoning, post-automobile and above all post-adjacency - the latter a new and liberating condition that means anything can now be developed anywhere next to anything else.

Originally the World Architecture Exposition in Nara was planned to take place this year, but the cold winds of recession have been blowing through the ancient city. It has now been put off until 2010, but a number of buildings for the Expo, are, or will shortly be, open. They include Arata Isozaki's conference hall, a rather unimpressive hotel by the late Aldo Rossi, and Kurokawa's apartments.

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